On Sept. 5, former Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years in prison for seditious conspiracy and leading a failed plot to stop the certification of the 2020 election results, which led to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
Tarrio’s sentence is the harshest that has been handed down with anyone in connection with the riot attack.
Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes was sentenced in May 2023 to 18 years in prison. Ethan Nordean and Joseph Biggs, two of Tarrio’s top lieutenants, were sentenced to 18 and 17-year prison sentences. Zachary Rehl, a Proud Boys chapter leader, was sentenced to 15 years in prison, and Dominic Pezzola, a low-level member, was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Prosecutors sought 33 years of imprisonment for Tarrio even though he was not present during the attack on Jan. 6, but they argued he played a significant role in encouraging the violence.
“Mr. Tarrio was the ultimate leader, the ultimate person who organized, who was motivated by revolutionary zeal,” district judge Timothy Kelly said at the end of the hearing. “What happened that day did not honor the founders, it was the kind of thing they wrote the Constitution to prevent.”
Before Tarrio was sentenced, he apologized for the pain that was suffered on Jan. 6.
“I have always tried to hold myself to a higher standard and I failed,” Tarrio said. “I held myself morally above others, and this trial has shown me how wrong I was.”
